Nurikabe/Portrayals
Anime First & Second In the first series he only appeared six times and always as a guest character. In the episode Invisible Magic, he is quite talkative and eats a lot of riceballs. There are times he is depicted without arms, even in Invisible Magic. In the second anime he is a recurring character and lives at the Yōkai Apartment. He is depicted as far more agile than in other series, being shown running and jumping several times. His tendency to only say "Nurikabe" is established here. Third The third series introduces Nurikabe's tendency to jump into scene out of nowhere or rise out of the ground to shield Kitarō and friends. He also speaks more often than in the seconnd series, even having his own regular voice actor, Yūsaku Yara. He has a soft spot for human (or human-like yōkai) women, becoming smitten with Ushirogami in episode #59 for example. More notable, however, was in episode #103 when he found and cared for a blind human girl named Beniko. He even fights Kitarō over her when she fears being reunited with her mother, whom Kitarō was helping unaware she was actually an evil yōkai who planned to eat Beniko. He is shown to be quite the gourmet, being shown taking his time eating and evaluating the taste of the pills Qi tricks him into eating in the film GeGeGe no Kitarō: Saikyō Yōkai Gundan! Nippon Jōriku!!. In Makura-Gaeshi's dream world, he is swarmed by rats, even though he's never shown fearing ratlike characters such as Nezumi-Otoko and Tesso. Fourth Like in the second anime, he is back to mostly only saying "Nurikabe", but he still has quite a presence, his abilities being used for a great deal of things. In the film GeGeGe no Kitarō: Dai-Kaijū, he takes the full force of the Dai-Kaijū's (Kitarō's) hair beam, and in episode #93 his body becomes a mirror thanks to a special polishing powder. In this series, like Konaki-Jijii, petrification spells and attacks have no effect on him since he is already like stone. He is not fearless, however, as he immediately retreated in the presence of the much larger Daidarabotchi in episode #29. His body and limbs are a lot larger than in most series, and his eyes are slightly bigger too. On the other hand, he is less agile, only reaching 33cm in the Graveyard Sports Meet in episode #40, essentially the equivalent of him merely falling forward. This series starts the tendency to have Nurikabe voiced by another main character's voice actor, in this case Ittan-Momen's Naoki Tatsuta. In episode #15, Makura-Gaeshi's dream world allowed him to visit an open air bath (he eventually would in the 5th anime). In episode #89, Rakshasa's spell lured him with a Jizō statue. Fifth As already mentioned, in this series Nurikabe has a family. In episode #13 it is revealed that he has been saving money while living at the tenement house on Yōkai Yokochō in order to build his own house for his family. In order to earn the money for building materials, he took odd jobs in the human world fighting evil yōkai, with Nezumi-Otoko acting as his "manager". He built the house himself, and his construction skills were later requested by Medama-Oyaji in episode #36 to help renovate the GeGeGe House and by Ohaguro-Bettari in episode #87 to help repair her bath house. He is very loyal and always keeps a promise, leading Nezumi-Otoko to worry about him being too trusting and never worrying about his own health. He is pretty agile again and can even ride a unicycle (episode #53). Incidentally, Kitarō has trouble even riding a bicycle in this series. In this series he is once again voiced by Tatsuta, who this time also voiced Konaki-Jijii. He is later chosen as the 4th of the 47 Yōkai Warriors of Japan. He's the representative of Fukuoka and his mark is located on the upper left part of his chest. Sixth In this series he once again has the same voice actor as Konaki-Jijii, Bin Shimada. He's again a good natured but dimwitted yōkai, repeating mostly his name and uttering slow, simple sentences to let himself be understood. Despite his shortcomings, he is still a fundamental part of the Kitarō Family, deeply caring for his friends. Live-action Other media Category:Character Subpage